It is reported that Niger Uranium Limited is to invest up to ZAR 25 million in a nickel exploration JV in South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Revealing this in a statement, the company explained that it had established a JV with Southern African Nickel Limited, joint owner and current developer of a portfolio of large nickel projects in Southern Africa, and had committed to making its investment over the next 20 months.

The statement added that the company believed its JV nickel projects had the potential to host large, low grade, economic, open-pittable sulphide nickel mineralization.

The statement said that flagship target was the Burgersfort project in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa, where preliminary results based on previous data and recent geophysics had identified a number of shallow nickel targets and three deeper targets for massive sulphide mineralization. Further large nickel targets were being pursued by the joint venture in the Bushveld region.

The SAN portfolio also included purchase options over nickel projects in Zimbabwe, where a large low grade deposit was targeted, as well as other mine dump projects.

The statement also revealed that implementation of the joint venture’s exploration programs, sampling and metallurgical evaluation had been sub contracted to Pangea Exploration (Pty) Limited, a South African based mineral resource exploration company.

Mr Paul Loudon non executive chairman of Niger Uranium said that the combination of SAN and Panex’s proven track records provided the potential for significant value creation. He added that "We intend that the joint venture would be developed into a separately listed nickel entity in the next ten months."

(Sourced from www.miningreview.com)